Ken Frazier, Merck CEO (Andrew Harnik/AP Images)

Ken Fra­zier ends his 29-year tenure at Mer­ck on a sour note, re­veal­ing a dip in sales in his fi­nal earn­ings call

Af­ter 29 years at the com­pa­ny, Mer­ck CEO Ken Fra­zier is say­ing farewell on a sour note.

In his last-ever earn­ings call on Thurs­day morn­ing, the soon-to-be re­tiree shared that Mer­ck’s rev­enue dipped 1% in Q1, miss­ing an­a­lysts’ ex­pec­ta­tions and be­com­ing the lat­est in a string of dis­ap­point­ing earn­ings re­sults from Big Phar­ma.

Fra­zier steered Mer­ck through a rough Q1, marked by the com­pa­ny’s de­ci­sion to scrap its Covid-19 vac­cine pro­grams (and lat­er a Covid ther­a­py li­censed from On­coIm­mune), a CRL for crown jew­el Keytru­da in triple neg­a­tive breast can­cer, and a with­draw­al of the block­buster’s ap­proval in metasta­t­ic small cell lung can­cer.

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